Fall and I Will Catch You
by VerelLupin
Summary: When Nancy fell he was there to catch her but now that Hartigan has fallen who will catch him? Sin City can have a few sunshine moments in its world of shadows. AU Movieverse Ending


**I love love love, Nancy and Hartigan. They should have been together at least once...**

**Anyway. I decided to write this in honor of my favorite Sin City couple. **

**This is based solely on the movie since I haven't had the pleasure of reading the comics.**

**Enjoy...**

* * *

There's wrong and there's wrong and there's us and then there's having a special spot in hell for just thinking what I'm thinking.

I stop her not because I want to because I need to. I already have her declaration of love on my conscience; I don't need the physical deed as well. I leave her disappointed and my own disappointment is cooled in the cold shower but it doesn't want to go away completely and my mind pictures her only a few feet away.

The fantasy is building when the shower curtain is pulled back.

"No, Nancy." I begin but the solid fist that comes at my face is not related at all to the girl on my mind, neither is the acrid smell of rotting flesh or the neon yellow of the leg holding me down.

"I look different, but I bet you can recognize my voice. I bet you recognize it don't you, you piece of shit cop."

"Jr. nice seeing you."

They say pieces of your life flash before your eyes when you're dying. It's true, at least on some level. I see Nancy, small and helpless and me on my knees watching her being taken away.

The look on her little face as Bob pumps me full of lead and sits me down. Her teary eyes and blonde hair that shifts between my bloody fingers, her sadness as she lies down against my legs, her warmth that battles the iciness of my dying body.

The letters every Thursday until I get a finger, the adrenaline rush of searching and finding her. The leap off the stage and the kiss that makes me wonder if deep down I am a pervert for wanting it to last longer. Running and escaping and then that all shattering declaration that she loves me and I love her too.

I hold onto the tree and force air back into my lungs. Up to this point my whole life has been devoted to Nancy and I will not let her die in the arms of that bastard, not after enduring eight years of hell to keep her safe, just because my heart remembered it had issues.

The barn door is open and there isn't a sound. "Good girl, Nancy."

I hurry in. I confront Jr. I fall and he believes it. I take out his weapons…both of them.

"I didn't scream, Hartigan. Not once."

"I know baby, I know."

We are by the car now and she's almost herself again. I give her one last kiss and she gets into her car believing every lie I told her.

Her taillights flash out of view and I put my gun to my head, "an old man dies and a young woman lives…fair trade," and pull the trigger.

"I love you, Nancy."

"Hartigan, Hartigan, John!"

I blink and open my eyes. I'm not outside lying dead in the snow. I'm inside, warm and cozy and lying next to the love of my life.

"Are you ok?" she asks and put the back of her hand to my forehead.

"Just a nightmare." I say but I'm confused. **'Did I die and go to heaven? Am I still alive and stuck in some hospital full of tubes while Senator Roark rages over my comatose body and Nancy cries at my side.'**

For a moment I feel that same pain in my chest as before and I stumble out of the bed and crash into the bathroom sink. I hear Nancy jump out of the bed in pursuit but I turn on the taps full blast and splash water on my face.

I look up and she's standing at the door, the fluorescent light exposes her nude body and her forehead is furrowed in concern. I look back down at the water and feel the horrified tears fall into my soaked hands.

**'What the hell have I done?'**

She comes closer and wraps her arms around me. I shake out of them and she slinks back to the doorway her face showing her confusion and hurt.

"Put some clothes on will ya." I say harshly.

I see her reflection nod. She turns and though I'm disgusted with myself I can't help but watch her walk away. Her hair is long but not long enough to hide the firm backside and achingly perfect curves I only glimpsed at Kadie's.

I close my eyes and think back but I can't remember anything from when I put the gun to my head and now. My head is clearly intact and I prod it but find no bullet marks of any kind.** 'What had happened and how did I end up doing exactly what I swore I wouldn't do?'**

A cold shower didn't help earlier maybe it will this time. I step into the freezing water, boxers and all and let it pound over me until a headache begins to form at my temples. I don't adjust the temperature I deserve this.

I lean into the spray and rest my head on the tiles. Hot fingers grip and massage the tense muscles of my shoulders and my eyes snap open. I turn and try to stop her but its impossible in the small shower with her skin slick to the touch and pressed up against mine.

She's so small, I should tower over her but I don't. She fits perfectly under my chin and I wonder if this life's way of telling me to be a man and accept my fate.

Her arms are winding around my neck lifting those pert breasts higher into my sight line. I try to look only at her face but skinny little Nancy is strong and determined. She wants me; Lord only knows why a beautiful young woman like her would desire a broken old man like me.

I tell her we need to stop but she's nuzzling me and dipping and rocking her hips into me and my long dormant desire is making a comeback with a vengeance. She reaches past my stomach but my hand manages to clasp hers right before she can push me over the edge.

"Not here, not like this," I struggle to put conviction into my voice. The shower is small and crowded and no place to worship her loveliness. Even if I was really going to follow through with this, the shower wouldn't do, we would need somewhere else, a five star hotel with satin sheets and expensive champagne in a bucket of ice and slow romantic music for starters.

She agrees, kisses where my heart is and steps out of the shower.

I linger even though I know she's waiting for me come out and continue where we started. I don't really know why I said what I did. Maybe it was all the blows to the head that are making me do stupid things.

I may have already done this once but that doesn't mean I have to repeat the mistake. I have to talk her out of it and I don't want to have this talk.

**'I'm a monster. I'm exactly what they said I was. She's just a kid. I'm old enough to be her grandfather.'**

I head back into the room. I must have taken longer than I meant to because the sexy come hither attitude is gone. Nancy is curled up with her arms wrapped around her knees in a too short nightgown and looking every inch the kid I think she is.

I swallow and approach the kid no, not kid but a young woman who has been traumatized in the worst way possible and who's only savior was a beat up ex cop turned con, who just rejected her.

"I need to be certain that I didn't take something; I had no right to have."

"You didn't do anything to me," she says and I wince at the hiccup in her voice.

I made her cry. I made my sweet Nancy cry.

"I didn't believe you when you said you'd put Roark in prison. You wouldn't have been locked up for so long if it were possible. I had to come back."

I chuckle at my own stupidity. "Of course you would see through that. I forget how smart you are sometimes. So tell me what happened between then and now."

"I was going to knock you out but I found you passed out in the snow. I saw the gun in your hand. I knew what you were going to do."

"I'm sorry I lied to you."

"I get it. It was smart." She shrugged and the nightgown road up. "It took a lot to drag you into the car. I managed to shove you in and drove us here. I was afraid you might die of hypothermia so I stripped us and climbed into the bed to keep you warm."

"So I was out the whole time. I didn't do anything at all?"

She smiles briefly and her head dips down hiding her face from me. "I wouldn't have minded you know…if you had wanted to do something. I wanted you to."

"No. That can't happen. I won't steal that from you."

"You can't steal what already belongs to you."

She says it so earnestly that I can feel my resolve start to crumble but I hold on it with desperate hands. **'How can I do anything when I can't guarantee her a future? What kind of future can she have with me?'**

"You don't know what you're saying. You're still young and one day you'll-"

"I'm young not dumb. I belonged to you the moment you took the fall for something you didn't do just so I'd be safe. I wasn't lying, Hartigan. I have tried with others but they weren't you. You are the only one for me, whether you like it or not. You are the one I want to touch and be touched by."

I'm so caught up in her impassioned speech that I didn't notice that I had moved closer or that she'd edged to the end of the bed and is now kneeling right in front of me. There is no light in the room save for the bathroom and the shadows thankfully hide the translucency of the material she is wearing and my reaction to it.

"It be wrong."

"Why?"

She trying to convince me and I'm so close to caving. So close to just reaching out and wrapping my arms around her and burying every last bit of me in her warm and willing body.** 'But if I do what will I leave her with? I can't take her away from everything she's known just because I need her to justify my miserable existence.'**

"Because it is."

"That's not an answer."

"I'm old, I have a bum ticker and you are young and unblemished and deserve so much more!" I explode and for a moment it looks like I've finally convinced her but then she grins and I know I'm in trouble. That she was just waiting for me to say something like that to trip me up.

"I work in a seedy bar and take my clothes off for complete strangers. I am not unblemished but I am innocent. How much longer do you think I can keep it up in this city? Unprotected and alone?"

This time I've strayed too close and her arms once more wrap around my neck and she stares up at me with promises of redemption in her eyes. "I may not survive another day, you may not survive another day, is it really wrong to want to give my innocence to someone who loves me, regardless of their age and past? Is it really wrong for me to want to have one piece of you to hang onto when you leave to keep me safe from Roark?"

And that's it. That's the argument I can't win. I want her to be happy and safe but she only wants those things with me. Only with me will she maintain her purity but she will only remain pure if she gives it to me to care for. It's a circle of guilt and love that goes around and around.

"Nancy, I do love you." I say and give in to this girl that gives an old man a chance to feel young again. She is my own personal hell and I'm willing to burn in it, in her.

I kiss her slow and delicate like she should be but Nancy is impatient. She's waited eight years for her body to mature and let her express the fantasies for the one cop and always hero that saved her.

I'm dragged down onto her and I roll us over so as to not crush her but she yanks me closer, claws at me as if afraid I'll vanish. I see that she fears that this is a dream.

"Stop," I whisper.

She nearly cries when I grab her hands, "no please don't leave. Not now."

"I'm not going anywhere not unless you tell me to."

"Oh, Hartigan." She says and hugs me to her.

"Call me John." I say and kiss her deeply.

They say that loving someone is addicting. I never understood that phrase until this moment. I kiss every inch of her. I start with the obvious like her mouth and neck and work my way to the inside of her elbows and the little spot behind her knees.

She squeals and sighs and moans and I can't get enough. I caress her again from top to bottom and everywhere in between. She offers to dance for me and I tell her that she has to be mindful of my age.

She marvels at my scars and gives attention to every bullet hole that adorns me.

She tortures me with little half sounds and her toned body gyrates in rhythms I had forgotten existed. The worries of what will come after everything is discovered dissolves in her sex and the overwhelming trust that shines when she guides me to it and into her.

"I love you, John Hartigan." She says. I smile down at her and slowly push in.

I want her to set the pace, I won't ever do anything to hurt her, and she urges me to go faster. My voice and body are strained to the limit but this is her first time.

I want her to enjoy every bit of it, I whisper every dirty thought I've had about her ever since I saw her with that rope and she comes apart with my hand soaked in her and my unshaven cheek against her breasts.

My shoulder will hurt like hell in the morning but it was worth it.

I breathe heavily and keep going, a little slow but then I am pushing sixty. She's ready a lot quicker than I thought and soon I'm the one with his face buried in her shoulder while she says things I hoped she's only heard about.

I lift her hips making my strokes deeper and less controlled. Her breath hitches and she grips all of me and I gasp, if I expire right now I will consider myself the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. The release is exhausting and we lay several minutes trying to catch and slow down our thundering hearts.

"I've always knew it be you," she says and cuddles into my side.

I stroke her sweaty hip and pull the blankets over us. "There was never anybody else for me," I say. In the morning after I get up and made sure I'm not dreaming I'll take her with me to Old Town and make a deal with Gail.

I respect the woman and how she cares for her girls. Maybe with her on my side I can give my Nancy a better life. A new life worthy of the second life she gave me.


End file.
